John Witchel is an American entrepreneur, NCAA and Pac-10 swimming champion (both as a team member and individually), two-time

Pan American Games The Pan American Games (also known colloquially as the Pan Am Games) is a continental multi-sport event in the Americas featuring summer sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The competition is held ...

gold medal winner, and two-time

Goodwill Games The Goodwill Games were an international sports competition created by Ted Turner in reaction to the political troubles surrounding the Olympic Games of the 1980s. In 1979, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan caused the United States and other ...

gold medal winner. He was the co-founder and CTO of

Prosper Marketplace Prosper Marketplace, Inc. is a San Francisco, California-based company in the peer-to-peer lending industry. Prosper Funding LLC, one of its subsidiaries, operates Prosper.com, a website where individuals can either invest in personal loans or r ...

, America's first peer-to-peer lending marketplace, and the co-creator

flash mob computing Flash mob computing or flash mob computer is a temporary ''ad hoc'' computer cluster running specific software to coordinate the individual computers into one single supercomputer. A flash mob computer is distinct from other types of computer clu ...

. He is the co-founder and current CEO of King Energy.

Early life and education

John Witchel was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. He attended

Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School ("Columbia Grammar", "Columbia Prep", "CGPS", "Columbia") is the oldest nonsectarian independent school in New York City, located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan (5 West 93rd Street). The school serves gr ...

, and graduated from

Stuyvesant High School Stuyvesant High School (pronounced ), commonly referred to among its students as Stuy (pronounced ), is a State school, public university-preparatory school, college-preparatory, Specialized high schools in New York City, specialized high school ...

in 1986. He earned a B.A. in Political Science from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in 1990, and an M.S. in Computer Science from

University of San Francisco The University of San Francisco (USF) is a private Jesuit university in San Francisco, California. The university's main campus is located on a setting between the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate Park. The main campus is nicknamed "The Hil ...

in 2004. An accomplished competitive swimmer, Witchel was a member of the U.S. National Swimming Team from 1985 through 1990, competing for the United States in the

(1986), the

(1987), and the

Pan Pacific Swimming Championships The Pan Pacific Swimming Championships is a long course swimming event first held in 1985. He won the Pac-10 Swimming Championships 200 Freestyle three times as an individual. He was a member of the Stanford University 1987 NCAA Swimming Championship team and won the 500 Freestyle in 1988 at the NCAA Division I Championships. Witchel competed at the

1989 Maccabiah Games The 13th Maccabiah Games brought 4,500 athletes to Israel from 45 nations. Jewish athletes from Hungary participated for the first time since World War II, Jewish athletes from Russia had been permitted, by their country, to play for the first ti ...

in Israel, winning a silver medal in the 200 m freestyle.

Career

XCom Corp

Witchel founded XCom Corp in September 1994 as an early web development shop in San Francisco, California. XCom was acquired by USWeb in 1996 prior to going public in 1997.

Prosper Marketplace

Witchel co-founded

in 2004 with

Chris Larsen Chris Larsen (born 1960) is a business executive and angel investor best known for co-founding several Silicon Valley technology startups, including one based on peer to peer lending. In 1996, he co-founded the online mortgage lender E-Loan, an ...

. He was the Chief Technology Officer and lead architect of the system. Prosper was the first peer-to-peer lending marketplace which allowed individuals to lend and borrow money directly from each other using a Dutch auction-like system. Witchel left the company prior to the 2008 SEC cease and desist order against Prosper.

Common Assets

In 2014, Witchel co-founded Common Assets as the Chief Technology Officer; it was acquired by

SolarCity SolarCity Corporation was a publicly traded company headquartered in Fremont, California that sold and installed solar energy generation systems as well as other related products and services to residential, commercial, and industrial customers ...

. Common Assets was the underlying infrastructure for SolarCity's Solar Bond program. SolarCity's Solar Bonds were the first such product to be nationally registered. After the Tesla acquisition of SolarCity, Tesla discharged most of its solar bonds ahead of the maturity date, paying back all the principal with interest for the life of the bond.

GitPrime, Inc.

Witchel helped launch GitPrime, an early software engineering analytics company, acquired by

Pluralsight Pluralsight, LLC is an American privately held online education company that offers a variety of video training courses for software developers, IT administrators, and creative professionals through its website. Founded in 2004 by Aaron Skonnar ...

in 2019. Initially as the first investor and board member, and then as president, Witchel was responsible for strategy and product design.

Board Work

Witchel was a board member and early investor in Shopatron from 2010 to 2015 (acquired by

Vista Equity Partners Vista Equity Partners is an American investment firm focused on financing and forwarding software, data, and technology-enabled startup businesses. Vista has invested in hundreds of companies, including Misys, Ping Identity, and Marketo. The co ...

) and UserTesting from 2012 to 2019. He is currently a board member of Wunder Capital, a

Boulder, Colorado Boulder is a home rule city that is the county seat and most populous municipality of Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, making it the 12th most populous city in Color ...

-based commercial solar financier, and La Plata Electric Association, a member-owned, not-for-profit, electric distribution cooperative in Southwest Colorado. He was previously an advisor to

Credit Karma Credit Karma is an American multinational personal finance company founded in 2007, which has been a brand of Intuit since December 2020. It is best known as a free credit and financial management platform, but its features also include monitor ...

and CrowdStreet.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Witchel, John Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Businesspeople from New York City 21st-century American businesspeople 20th-century American businesspeople Medalists at the 1987 Pan American Games Competitors at the 1986 Goodwill Games Stanford University alumni University of San Francisco alumni Businesspeople from Colorado Swimmers at the 1987 Pan American Games Maccabiah Games swimmers Maccabiah Games silver medalists for the United States Competitors at the 1989 Maccabiah Games Pan American Games gold medalists for the United States Pan American Games medalists in swimming